ABC News on MoCo Sex Ed

ABC published this column by Weekly Standard columnist Hadley Arkes on Tuesday. Arkes is the Ney Professor of American Institutions at Amherst College and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

It's a stunning piece. Arkes speaks with the dense and nuanced language of a seasoned intellectual, and delivers some heavy blows to the extreme agenda that has passed itself off as mainstream to try and indoctrinate children into sexual boundlessness.

The program, when it was finally written, reflected the liberal orthodoxy of the education establishment. With the claim to teach in an authoritative way about health and sex, the program put forth a series of "myths" to be corrected with "facts." But the myths were not all mythical, nor the facts all factual. And the authors could not restrain themselves from pronouncing on the moral dimness of people holding opposing views, including the theological backwardness of those religions that continue to honor the tradition of Jewish and Christian teaching on these matters.

U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams, Jr., halted the course on May 5, and Arkes writes that "the jolt has had a deeper resonance, not least because Williams happens to be a Clinton appointee."

But the lasting tremors come from the fact that the decisive strands in his May 5 judgment are lines of argument that have been used most often by the left: The judge invoked the concern for an establishment of religion, and beyond that, he raised the charge, under the First Amendment, that people with discordant views were being blocked from the public square.

Lastly, Arkes makes a bold suggestion that the parents in MoCo have been making for some time, but which is considered too politically incorrect for many. Arkes is the first voice I have heard to make this comment, which appears to me to be backed up by facts:

Do liberals want to break through conventions with "sex education"? Then education it should be: The life-shortening hazards of homosexual behavior should be conveyed, along with information about the other hazards of incautious sex; the record of conversions from the homosexual life should be put in texts along with the inconclusive arguments over the "gay gene."

Wow. An ABC column saying students should be taught about the health risks of homosexuality--higher rates of STD's and HIV, etc.--and that ex-gays should be included as well. That's truly radical, and truly needed.